Changing the subject (to beer, what else?): Tomorrow is the Midwest Brewers Fest. I will be working in the homebrew pavillion, giving a brewing demonstration. It's a family thing for us -- my wife, daughter, son-in-law, and I are the brewing demo team.

The years just pass like trains. I wave, but they don't slow down.-- Steven Wilson

The brewing demos went well. And we get 10 gallons of (nearly) free beer out of the deal -- the sponsor of the homebrew pavillion provided the ingredients, the fest provided ice to chill the wort after the boil, and we get to take the finished wort home and ferment it. All we had to pay for ourselves was the propane to run the burners.

Unlike in past years, there was running water (in the form of a garden hose) available at the demo site; this made cleanup easier. Really glad we didn't have to take all of our sticky, crusty equipment home and clean it later like we did last year!

The years just pass like trains. I wave, but they don't slow down.-- Steven Wilson

Ignition! wrote:It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.

The rest of his "things I won't work with" posts are always amusing and eye-opening.

Another slice of Ignition! to get some insight on the writing style:

Ignition! wrote:It happened at their Shreveport, Louisiana, installation, while they were preparing to ship out, for the first time, a one-ton steel cylinder of CTF. The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly, it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a threefoot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess. Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood, and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty — the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2 and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.

EDIT: Even better, a follow-up post in Derek Lowe's "Things I Won't Work With" category complete with a video from some intrepid French laboratory destroyers using ClF3.

My mouse is dying; the track wheel is working erratically, the left button is kind of mushing rather than clicking, and something managed to chew a bit of the right handle off. So I went to Target and Best Buy to look for mice yesterday.

WTF? 2 wired mice available and they were both the ultra cheap crappy store brand. Whatever happened? I've got one from Amazon coming in now.

Also, Oh man, they have done horrible things to the PC selection at Best Buy.

Ugly people have sex all the time. We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion humans if you had to be beautiful to get laid.

paulWTAMU wrote:My mouse is dying; the track wheel is working erratically, the left button is kind of mushing rather than clicking, and something managed to chew a bit of the right handle off. So I went to Target and Best Buy to look for mice yesterday.

WTF? 2 wired mice available and they were both the ultra cheap crappy store brand. Whatever happened? I've got one from Amazon coming in now.

Apparently nobody buys decent wired mice any more. I had a similar experience at Staples recently; fortunately "crappy store brand" was adequate for the intended use (wife wanted a basic corded mouse to use with her laptop at a training she was attending).

paulWTAMU wrote:Also, Oh man, they have done horrible things to the PC selection at Best Buy.

Best Buy has been basically worthless for computer stuff for several years now. IIRC the only computer gear I've bought there in the past ~5 years was a pair of hard drives at the height of the hard drive shortage (Thailand floods). It took Best Buy a long time to adjust their pricing to reflect market conditions, so they were still selling drives at pre-flood prices for several weeks.

Pretty much the only thing Best Buy is any good for these days is kitchen appliances. Need a new Kitchenaid mixer? They've got those in all the colors!

The years just pass like trains. I wave, but they don't slow down.-- Steven Wilson

just brew it! wrote:Apparently nobody buys decent wired mice any more. I had a similar experience at Staples recently; fortunately "crappy store brand" was adequate for the intended use (wife wanted a basic corded mouse to use with her laptop at a training she was attending).

Best Buy has been basically worthless for computer stuff for several years now. IIRC the only computer gear I've bought there in the past ~5 years was a pair of hard drives at the height of the hard drive shortage (Thailand floods). It took Best Buy a long time to adjust their pricing to reflect market conditions, so they were still selling drives at pre-flood prices for several weeks.

Pretty much the only thing Best Buy is any good for these days is kitchen appliances. Need a new Kitchenaid mixer? They've got those in all the colors!

I still buy nice, wired mice. I just know it's not even worth it go to go a B/M store for them. Even Microcenter doesn't have anything worth a damn.

Just don't shop at BestBuy people. Chances are there is a store with something similar, and at a better price close by. Or the internet.

paulWTAMU wrote:Also, Oh man, they have done horrible things to the PC selection at Best Buy.

I bought the Anker gaming mouse from amazon after my RAT Cyborg crapped the bed after just a little over a year. The Anket was $40, feels fantastic in hand, has all the bells and whistles I want, and I feel like it's a very high quality device. The software for it is nice too. Lots of easy to record macros, buttons, even change the light color with it. I really like this mouse.

This site lets you watch the entire sequence -- with pause/forward/back capability -- in its entirety.

Note: The current frame, as of 9:47 CDT, is all black... a "fade to black" between scenes of sorts. You can hit the second link above and use the left-arrow key to move back through the last few hours/days worth of frames (it wraps around) if you want to get a feel for the recent history... or just let the aubronwood site load and free-run to get the whole sequence from the start.

Well, after more than three thousand frames, it's finally over. There is now a blag post about it, explaining exactly what was going on in the comic and some history on how much work went into it.

If you want to see the entire sequence, the geekwagon viewer is probably the best I've seen, as you can not only set the frame rate, but set pauses on "special" frames (all dialog is considered special). That's in addition to being able to manually switch between frames.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

Pretty much blowing off steam. I mean, we all hear about people on the registries for stuff like public urination and crap like that, but UGH, aggravated sexual assault of a minor and you're out after apparently 1-2 years?

Ugly people have sex all the time. We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion humans if you had to be beautiful to get laid.

paulWTAMU wrote:Pretty much blowing off steam. I mean, we all hear about people on the registries for stuff like public urination and crap like that, but UGH, aggravated sexual assault of a minor and you're out after apparently 1-2 years?

Fully understood. Probably best to take followups to R&P 'cause this discussion is sure to get there anyways.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

There's a bunch of apartments a block down the road from me and when you pull up the sheriffs site, they're awash in sex offenders. One of them walks his dog past my house. So far, none of them have done anything. And a guy I went to high school with is on there because he got busted mooning cars when he was 17.

A glorious day here in Greater Burlington, VT. Temps around 60, the humidity haze gone from the skies, bright sunshine. Today was perfectly autumnal and that makes me happy. Soon to come are random drives down dirt roads with the trees all in fall colors and apple-picking season. We've made it through the dog days and the climate is now moving to the part of the year where I don't complain about it (even if I wake up in January to find 24" of "climate" in my driveway).

If I remember I'll grab the dSLR and show y'all why I live in and love this state. Vids would need to come from the aged phone, though.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

Captain Ned wrote:A glorious day here in Greater Burlington, VT. Temps around 60, the humidity haze gone from the skies, bright sunshine. Today was perfectly autumnal and that makes me happy. Soon to come are random drives down dirt roads with the trees all in fall colors and apple-picking season. We've made it through the dog days and the climate is now moving to the part of the year where I don't complain about it (even if I wake up in January to find 24" of "climate" in my driveway).

If I remember I'll grab the dSLR and show y'all why I live in and love this state. Vids would need to come from the aged phone, though.

I'm just down the way in Cambridge/Boston. Weather is amazing right now.